their birth options just as they re- view options before buying a car or household appliance. To help allay our cultural birth phobias, I suggest several YouTube videos. In Happy- Birth, a French woman has a happy home birth and squeals with joy as she pushes the baby out. In Elephant Birth: The Dramatic Struggle for Life and Baby Chimp’s Birth at Attica Zoologi- cal Park, we see the female’s innate wisdom about birth positions, what to do in unusual circumstances and the need for other experienced females to attend births for moral support. These are empowering examples of female wisdom, a greatly minimized cultural grace. A woman should not be scared out of her wits during the birth pro- cess, nor should she be scared out of her power, which is founded in deep wisdom.
Our goal should be that every
low-risk and healthy woman should be able to have a home birth attended by a competent midwife. This is especially true in poor rural areas, where there are no obstetricians or hospitals and women have to travel long distances for prenatal care and delivery.
For more information about the recep- tion, documentary screenings and Gas- kin’s appearance as a keynote speaker at the Green Family Expo, see Calendar listings, page 52 and Earth Day events, page 16. Also visit GreenFamilyExpo. org and
BirthStoryMovie.com.
natural awakenings
April 2013
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